ABSTRACT
This chapter considers who needs to be emancipated from what and how a critical language awareness (CLA) can contribute to the process of emancipation. It concerns how practices which maintain and reproduce patterns of domination and subordination in society may be contested, especially language practices. Emancipatory discourse is to do with opposition and resistance: recognising the forces which are leading to fit in with the status quo and resisting them. Dialogue is not a generally accepted form of discourse in academic writing. Critical educators have to take account of the full complexity of the social context when introducing CLA. People have to choose between conventional language use on the one hand, and practising emancipatory discourse with its commitment to some sort of change on the other. People can only learn how to practise emancipatory discourse when faced with all the subtleties of a real social context in which to choose their words.
